The struggle for female representation at any talks that might resume in Geneva is all too familiar. “You could just delete ‘Syria’ from this discussion and put in Northern Ireland, Liberia, Northern Mali or South Africa,” says one U.N. observer.

It is being hailed as the most progressive state policy so far, going further than New Jersey, California and Rhode Island in various respects. But its showcase potential won’t be tested until the program gets going in 2018.

Over the next few years campaigners will be trying to boost the number of women running and serving in the tribunals and offices that make some of the most consequential decisions in international justice.

The annual weeklong event in New York City is designed to inspire women to “find their strength.” The folk and blues musician started it in 2010, as a reaction to the midterm elections that year and the impending “war on women.”

The foreign minister promised to develop a feminist foreign policy agenda and tried to do so in the case of Saudi Arabia. She got blow-back instead. Now, some who knew Margot Wallstrom as a U.N. envoy fear a major human rights opportunity is lost.

In the 1970s they tackled issues such as workplace discrimination and losing custody of their children in the courts. Today, as same-sex marriage sweeps the country, this group is focused on the unique isolation and discrimination of older lesbians.

Regulatory reform is expected to gradually improve housing safety for transgender detainees. At the same time the Department of Homeland Security is cutting beds and exploring programs that move at-risk people out of locked-in facilities and into houses and hotels.

During a tour of the only housing unit that ICE sets aside for GBT detainees to live together, one detainee in Santa Ana praised conditions. Lawyers and other advocates are still watching to see if guards’ behavior improves after a sensitivity training this summer. The third of four stories.

Mistreatment of transgender detainees described in government documents match the anecdotal accounts in dozens of interviews. One lawyer says she has never met a transgender detainee who has not been subject to some sort of harassment. The second of four stories.

Mexico is one of the world’s most dangerous places to be transgender. But as lawmakers try to change that, transgender women who are deported confront a social backlash that makes their homeland more fearful than ever. The first of four stories.

In Case You Missed It

It is being hailed as the most progressive state policy so far, going further than New Jersey, California and Rhode Island in various respects. But its showcase potential won’t be tested until the program gets going in 2018.